Watch out for a close and entertaining lung opener

The excitement of the World Cup is already in the air, at Newlands in the beautiful city of Cape Town. The first encounter is going to set the tone for this World Cup - host South Africa taking on West Indies.

On paper South Africa might look like a stronger team, and many pundits wouldn't even dare to give West Indies a chance of pulling off a big upset. I think West Indies will give their best to make this a close and entertaining encounter.

To my thinking, both the teams are evenly balanced. West Indies batting can be very explosive and tear apart any attack. The likes of Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Brian Lara, Carl Hooper should never be taken lightly by any side. The resilience of Shivnarine Chanderpaul and the talent of Ramnaresh Sarwan makes the West Indies batting line-up an awesome one.

It will be interesting to see whether the stylish batsman Marlon Samuels makes it into the side. If he has recovered from the injury and is fit to play, any bowling attack will find it hard to have a crack at the West Indies batting.

I would think that West Indies would go in with four fast bowlers, with Hooper and Gayle wheeling their arm over to fill in the fifth bowler's role. Merv Dillon, Drakes and the extremely quick Jermaine Lawson have it in them to cause panic in the South African batting line up.

What might possibly give South Africa the slight edge over their opponents from Caribbean is their better fielding talent and the number of allrounders they possess. The likes of Jonty Rhodes and Herschelle Gibbs are simply brilliant in the field, and surely they will try to set the tempo by stopping valuable runs, putting pressure on the batsmen, effecting run outs, and importantly taking stunning catches. Yes, someone like Jonty flying across the turf is something people travel miles to watch.

The old warhorse Allan Donald still has it in him to strike like a lightning, and the most improved fast bowler in recent times - Makhaya Ntini provide wonderful support to the extremely efficient South African skipper Shaun Pollock. The South African batting looks a well-oiled machine and is capable of posting huge scores, with someone like Mark Boucher scoring consistently low in the order.

The availability of Jacques Kallis for this important game is going to make a huge impact. Kallis is possibly the best allrounder in world cricket today, and if he were to miss the game, that will only help the happy-go-lucky Windies team's cause. Possibly the one thing that will go against the home-crowd favourite South Africa is their uncanny knack of crumbling under pressure. When the two teams met last in the ICC Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka last September, South Africa almost choked and scraped through to a narrow win.

I am sure that the first game of the competition is a very important one, and I for one won't be surprised if both these teams qualify for the Semi Finals.